Hull Road crossing repair under debate

Contractor and engineer argue over who is responsible for problem

The orange flag marks one area of erosion next to the rock-filled gabion baskets. (Dianne Stallings — Ruidoso News)

The village of Ruidoso bears no financial responsibility for the repair of a large culvert crossing over Cedar Creek on Hull Road, J. R. Baumann, director of Public Works for Ruidoso, recently assured village councilors.

The crossing installation, elevation change and realignment were accomplished in record time last year before the arrival of the tourist season. But soon after, cracks appeared in the pavement and large chunks of compacted material fell away from structure, causing many drivers to worry about the safety of traveling over the crossing.

The Hull Road crossing over Cedar Creek is marred with large asphalt patches and marked with orange cones, not pretty, but safe, Ruidoso village officials say. (Dianne Stallings — Ruidoso News)

"First of all, I want everybody to know that this is a safe crossing," Baumann said at last week's council meeting. "No failure is going to happen. There are some drainage issues and erosion issues there that we are trying to address with the engineer and contractor. We got the contractor and engineer to sit down at the table and attempted to work this out. The village's stance is that we hired professional people to give us a professional product and we are not putting up another nickle. You all need to get this fixed."

Advertisement

The contractor believes that he built exactly what the engineer designed, Baumann said. "He believes he is not at fault at this point in time," the director said. "The engineer took that back to his business and talked to his partners about it and they don't believe that. The contractor has put it entirely on the engineer to pay for the fixes that need to be done. The engineer has come back and said they are hiring another engineer at their own cost to refute what the contractor's engineer said. Nothing else is being spent out of village coffers. It's tied up with those two arguing over who pays. I believe it will finally be turned over to one of their insurance agents and the problem will be resolved, but in the meantime, we're going to have to live with what we've got until they can work it out."

He declined to put a date on when the repairs might be tackled.

"The contractor is willing to get started immediately, but he's not willing to put up a dime, any part of the cost at all," Baumann said. "No one has given an exact figure, but I heard $30,000 is the number being passed around. We are not letting this go and we will make them correct it, but it will be a little longer. It is not unsafe and we wanted you to know that."

For a few months, surveyor Eric Collins measured for any movement in the installation, Baumann said. "He went out every couple of weeks to make sure nothing was moving," Baumann said. "The whole issue comes down to erosion off the road by the (baskets of rocks used to control erosion), but that almost completely stopped now, because grass took over and slowed it down. It's just not quite right. But really, if we walked away right now, it probably would be OK in our life time."

Councilor Rafael Salas said he would like the engineer on the project to put something in writing about the crossing being safe.

"I will move forward on that," Baumann said. "We have not released their (performance) bond on this project."